I agree - there seem to be a number of bodies that are supposed to input patient/community viewpoints into NHS services. There are also PLACE assessments that apply to individual hospitals. There is also Healthwatch which a statutory body who’s remit is to gather feedback locally on lo peoples experience of health and social care services, then work with the service providers to improve outcomes where necessary, keeping the public informed so that they can see that their views are acted on. I am a director of our local Heathwatch which is set up as a charity - there are 152 other local Healthwatch bodies. In our case we have seats on the local NHS clinical commissioning group and the council Health & Wellbeing Board so we do have a voice that has to be heard. I'd encourage you to contact your local Healthwatch and feedback your experience:

There are changes being rolled out within the NHS to give local commissioning groups more say in the commissioning of services so they better reflect local needs and priorities, so it's important that you give your input

Hi Excalibur, yes I know about Healthwatch - seems to vary from region to region as to how active they are. I just find it rather worrying that we have quite so many organizations - all with seemingly similar remits and all with funding.

I suppose the NHS is desparate to find ways of getting community input into its workings given the challenges it faces on resources, and so the result is to try several different approaches in order to ensure it does get public input. I agree that it's a little worrying that each of these requires funding, but it's a small part of the total spend. In our case Healthwatch NS has a funding of about £150k per year, against a local NHS CCG sprend of about £250m. The funding is a seed - it then brings in a lot of unpaid volunteers (including myself). But I'm not sure what this NHS citizen is going to achieve as it seems to be a centralised NHS England approach whereas the trend is to devolve more and more to local decisions.

Eventually hopefully we'll achieve a more focused approach provided the NHS doesn't get reorganised again